RANCHOS PALOS VERDES, Calif.—Following the conclusion of Scrubs & Heels 2025, founders Aline Charabaty, MD, and Anita Afzali, MD, sat down with Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News to discuss a weekend of seminars and roundtable discussions aimed at improving leadership opportunities for women in GI. “Gastroenterology is a field, a professional specialty, where we have not hit critical mass,” Dr. Afzali said, adding that she and Dr. Charabaty founded the forum to “really build a community for women in the field of medicine.”
Topics addressed at the summit included cultivating mentorships, handling conflict in the workplace, leveraging social media and financial management.
“Women have so many barriers achieving their career goals, and one barrier we don’t want happening is women being a barrier to other women,” Dr. Charabaty stressed. “We’re creating a community [of women] empowered enough to address their career, but also to lift others as we climb.”
—GEN Staff